Top 10 conclusions Premier League weekend 2-3 April

1. At 1.30pm on Saturday it looked like it was going to be a disastrous weekend for Manchester United. In the end it could scarcely have been a better weekend for them.

2. It was a mixed afternoon for the Upton Park camera: kissed by Mark Noble kiss and sworn at by Wayne Rooney.

3. Arsenal dropping points against a 10-man team from the north-west: how cliché (not Gael).

4. Poor Mario Balotelli. You could tell he was desperate to make headlines for the right reasons but couldn’t find a goal in a 5-0 win with five different goalscorers. He’ll now have to host a public cat-drowning later in the week instead.

5. Roy Hodgson would no doubt have been fairly confident of Liverpool’s potential to drop points on the road, but it will have been pleasant to be the beneficiary of this for once.

6. Thanks to the Tangerines’ defence, Michael Jackson wasn’t the only gaudy statue on display at Fulham v Blackpool.

7. Jermaine Beckford v Aston Villa probably won’t live quite as long in the memory as Frank Lampard v Germany, but David Moyes might fire a strongly-worded letter off to Sepp Blatter if he gets a spare minute this week.

8. Arsenal, Chelsea and Tottenham might be desperate to get in the Champions League draw, but draws like those will not help them get in the Champions League.

9. It was very disappointing that Jonas Gutierrez shunned his Spiderman mask celebration. OTP isn’t sure whether this is because he realised his goals were so few and far between that it wasn’t worth carrying the mask, or because Shola Ameobi had stolen his thunder by wearing his own mask.

10. Dropping Fernando Torres not only removes an ineffectual striker from your team, but also seems to have the added benefit of making Didier Drogba run around like a man possessed.